Answer
by piaffe417
Summary: She passes the file over, her right hand brushing his left during the exchange, and when their eyes meet in surprise at the contact, she finds her answer. She did it on purpose.


A/N – Readers! We won't discuss how long it's been since I have written (or have felt like writing, for that matter). But CI has been too good lately to let this one go, so great episodes (combined with my recent discovery of the following Sarah McLachlan gem of a song) have prompted the following tale. It's been too much fun watching the Goren/Eames dynamic grow and stretch and change these past several years, so many thanks to Vincent D'Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe for their terrific work. (Thanks also to them and to Dick Wolf for not suing me for my writing. I very much appreciate not having to hire a lawyer.)

Spoilers: Anything prior to "Untethered" is fair game. Consider yourself warned.

Archive Requests: Shoot me an email and I'm usually willing to share. (An email and cookies and I'm _definitely_ willing to share.)

_I will be the answer  
At the end of the line  
I will be there for you  
Why take the time  
In the burning of uncertainty  
I will be your solid ground  
I will hold the balance  
If you can't look down  
_

_If it takes my whole life  
I won't break, I won't bend  
It will all be worth it  
Worth it in the end  
Because I can only tell you that I know  
That I need you in my life  
When the stars have all gone out  
You'll still be burning so bright _

Cast me gently  
Into morning  
For the night has been unkind  
Take me to a  
Place so holy  
That I can wash this from my mind  
And break choosing not to fight

If it takes my whole life  
I won't break, I won't bend  
It will all be worth it  
Worth it in the end  
Because I can only tell you that I know  
That I need you in my life  
When the stars have all gone out  
You'll still be burning so bright

Cast me gently  
Into morning  
For the night has been unkind 

_Answer, Sarah McLachlan_

He'd started smoking again.

Bobby was a smoker when he'd first joined Major Case – a vice left over from his undercover days in Narcotics and probably from the Army before that, though Alex couldn't be sure. She was sure, however, that she had never met anyone from Narcotics who _didn't_ smoke; the habit seemed to be handed out on the day the "Narcs" got the badges they wore on chains around their necks, the ones that usually got lost in the ragtag assortment of long, unkempt hair and mismatched clothing that helped them blend into the dealing scene on the streets. The nicotine – a legal drug, though who was to say that some members of the squad didn't switch to harder things when the temptation grew too great - seemed to be the one thing to steady jangling nerves. It kept them from twitching with perpetual adrenaline when they were off-duty and kept temptation at bay when they were on – four kilos of street-ready coke in the trunk of a police issue sedan with no one looking was convenient, easy, and could put at least one kid through college whereas a policeman's salary usually barely paid the rent.

Still, Alex had ever _seen_ Bobby smoke when they'd first been paired; rather, she'd caught an occasional whiff of smoke clinging to his jacket when he'd come in from the cold and noticed the slight nicotine stain between his middle and forefingers when he'd splayed his hands across their shared desk space. But gradually, as he'd relaxed into the more regular rhythms of working "upper class" cases in a suit and tie and his brain had begun to work overtime as he'd wormed into the minds of the criminals they sought, the habit had disappeared, resurfacing again only when he used cigarettes as props to create characters and gather information.

Since his time in "Heaven," however, the habit had reappeared with a vengeance and that was how she knew he wasn't okay.

Granted, he hadn't been "okay" for some time – not since the death of his mother and reappearance of his older brother anyway. But this degree of "not okay" was new and unfamiliar territory; it was darker, with more holes to get lost in and storms of emotion sweeping through without warning than Alex had previously encountered. Even after their dealings with Nicole Wallace, their journeys into the most depraved motivations of human consciousness and capability, she wasn't accustomed to being in this new place with him.

She also wasn't accustomed to trying to help him from a distance – a distance that she herself had put there.

It wasn't that she had tried on purpose to hurt him – she would never intentionally do that to the person she considered to be her best friend in the world – but she'd spoken in frustration and now lived to regret it, particularly since she'd not said just anything during that moment of flippancy: she'd spoken the truth.

That the truth usually hurt when delivered in unmitigated form was something that Alex's parents – and, on more than one occasion, her siblings – had taught her (though her parents at least had the common decency to attempt to soften whatever blows they could; her brothers were known to steal her Halloween candy without remorse and her sister had no qualms about telling her that her new jeans weren't flattering to her figure). The members of the Eames family, it was safe to say, let the truth fly with bare knuckles much of the time and, because of that, tit for tat wasn't a game she learned from her partner's dealings with Nicole Wallace.

But for every great thing that happened in her own life, for every great truth that had been delivered on a silver platter (or on a velvet pillow, like that long ago crown fit for the head of a homecoming queen that affirmed her popularity in the student body), she could easily think of a truth that had arrived like a punch to the gut. Learning that her husband Joe wasn't coming home again was the quickest example that sprang to mind there. Truth didn't come much more hurtful than learning that the love of your life had been killed on the job.

Of course, she hadn't admitted the truth to herself for a long time, hadn't admitted that the sucker punch of Joe's death had affected her more deeply than she let on and that it took years for her to breathe normally without feeling the double lift of her chest as her lungs expanded once, felt the pain and weight of loss, then pushed through it to draw in air. It took almost eighteen months before she bought a new answering machine and recorded her own outgoing message, preserving the old machine and Joe's upbeat tones for those particularly low days when she needed to hear him say, "Hi, this is Joe. I work for Alex. She's not here and neither am I. Chances are I'm out picking up her dry cleaning or washing her car. Leave us a message and we'll get back to you." It was easier instead to accept the blow that was his death, double over for a short span of time, then put her guard back up and start throwing punches of her own again. Alex Eames could spar with the best of them, after all, and she never held back.

Okay, _almost_ never.

That was where Bobby came in. Truth was complicated with Bobby and, though she was fine with seeking it as a part of their job description, allowing truth to creep into their conversations about their lives outside of work was a horse of a different color. For a man to have lived through as much hurt and betrayal as Bobby Goren had during his youth – schizophrenic mother, absent father, delinquent brother, self-obsessed mentor – and still get up every day wanting to carve out a better world for other people was beyond impressive as far as Alex was concerned. His growing up years made hers look as though they had been painted by Norman Rockwell (homecoming crown and all) and she always thought it was unfair that life had jaded Bobby Goren before he'd really done much living.

Because of all of that – what she knew (and also what she didn't know because he wouldn't tell her, wouldn't open that part of himself up to anyone), she didn't hit Bobby with the truth the same way that she did other people. Other people could take it. Other people deserved it (usually). _Other people weren't her best friend._

As a team, Goren and Eames hit other people with the unmitigated, unabashed truth. It was their job and they were good at it. In denial about killing your spouse? Goren and Eames could clear that up for you. Unaware that your children were robbing you blind? Call Goren and Eames! Didn't know it was a crime to transport, receive, or sell stolen goods? Let Goren and Eames explain that tricky little proposition in legal-ease.

As friends, however, Bobby and Alex each had their own preferred methods of sugar-coating truths they shared with each other. His was to hide them altogether, not mentioning his pain or insecurities but rather veiling them under a thin veneer of quirky antics and useless trivia. If the truth ever did rise to the surface, he pushed it gently aside with matter-of-fact firmness as though it were an impudent child butting into the conversation. Hers was to deliver the truth as gently as if it were made of glass, then shield it quickly with a protective covering of dry humor. It worked for them and worked well – right up until the all of the little truths they'd tiptoed over for all the years of their partnership had grown too big to be hidden and too severe to be smothered in humor.

The seams began to tear open at the moment Alex realized she hadn't dealt with Joe's death at all the way that she should have, a slow rip that opened wider and wider the more it sank into her consciousness. Bobby (bless his heart for trying) had done his best to shield her from the worst of it, but even his encyclopedic mind and vast array of mental trickery couldn't hold it off for long.

She remembered walking into the room where her partner sat, remembered seeing all of the pieces of Joe's long-closed case peppering the corkboard, the walls, the table. She remembered taking it all in and feeling the thin veneer of composure she'd been living behind since Joe's funeral give way as the truth emerged from hiding and stepped into the light.

"You know we have to do this, Alex," Bobby told her in his softest, most apologetic tone. It was the voice he normally reserved for dealing with children who'd been through traumatic events and for a moment she hated him for it. In that split second, while the tears pooled in her eyes and her throat began to close off with the grief she'd hidden away for so long, she loathed Bobby Goren for daring to find the truth and set it free.

But Bobby had called her "Alex" – he _never_ called her Alex in or outside of work, preferring instead to hold her at the comfortable arm's length that referring to her as "Eames" allowed him. And it was because he'd allowed her that close to him, because he'd taken down the barrier between them – if only for a moment – she couldn't hate him for any longer than it took for her to catch her breath.

So even though the truth hurt, hearing Bobby acknowledge – even if unconsciously – that he was sharing the burden with her, that they were in it together, helped soften the blow.

Why she didn't do the same thing for him when she had the opportunity, then, she isn't sure. When a suspect in custody had screamed that she'd never advance in the police force because she'd hitched her wagon to Bobby's, that he was keeping her from the sort of greatness that she might be capable of if - that she was _tainted_ - she hadn't shared the weight of the accusation with him, hadn't cushioned it the way he would have for her. She recognized the kernel of truth in the words – that maybe standing in his six-foot four inch shadow and playing straight man to his wild card and good cop to his squirrely cop – had forever altered her career; she couldn't go back and change things now. She'd recognized the truth but she hadn't spared Bobby from the force of it the way that he had done for her.

"You worried about what she said -- that your career could be tainted by me?" he'd asked her thoughtfully when they were left alone. It was his light, teasing tone, the one that he always used to ease the mood after they'd wrapped a particularly difficult case. It was a tone that implied he anticipated a flippant answer from her that they could chuckle over together while they finished their paperwork.

So why hadn't she given him what he expected? Why hadn't she told him that she wouldn't trade working with him for anything? She'd done it at the courthouse on the day her long-ago, hastily written request for transfer had been read in open court; that day, she'd said he was "an acquired taste" and that she hadn't regretted withdrawing the letter and remaining at his side. It was easy to say then and she'd meant it.

Yet instead of giving Bobby Goren – her best friend – what he needed, she'd shrugged and answered: "I used to."

"And now?" Bobby had pressed the issue further, prickly and suspicious.

"Now it's too late," she had shrugged with finality and left him alone with the thought hanging in the air between them.

The words had come out completely wrong, she later realized. She hadn't meant to let him think that somehow he'd ruined her career or that she resented working with him, but rather meant that she'd come to a sense of peace about her place in the world, in the NYPD, and in their relationship and she didn't want – or need – any more.

(Of course, what she'd effectively said with her words and her nonchalant shrug was that she had been stuck with him for so long now that she was somehow "resigned to her fate" to wither away at his side.)

And, as she sits across from him at their shared desks, finishing their never-ending stack of paperwork in the now-still bullpen and smelling faintly the stink of stale cigarette smoke that emanates from his blazer, she can't, for the life of her, figure out how they've become so detached from each other that she could let something so hurtful emerge from her own lips at a time when he needed her so badly.

Logan and Falacci are new to each other – they're supposed to fight and argue in an attempt to establish even ground in their partnership. But Goren and Eames are supposed to be unshakeable, the solid bedrock that the Major Case Squad is built on. They don't hurt each other intentionally – or at least they aren't supposed to.

_What? You helped him with the undercover operation, helped him find out that Donny was telling the truth_, the voice in her head reminds her. _You got him out of there – without you, he'd probably be dead._

_Yeah, and if you'd not mentioned that Frank was waiting outside and looked sober enough to be telling the truth, he wouldn't have gotten involved in the first place_, retorts the other side of her consciousness.

"Do you have the ME's report on Rappaport?" he asks her suddenly, breaking her reverie and causing her to start at the breaking of the silence between them. Like glass, it shatters and leaves dangerous shards of conversation topics resting between them, topics that can cut a person open if touched.

"Um," she hunts through the stack of files on her right. "I think it's… Here."

She passes it over, her right hand brushing his left during the exchange, and when their eyes meet in surprise at the contact, she finds her answer.

She did it on purpose.

The unabridged, unmitigated, and whole truth (nothing but) is that she wanted to put the distance back between them, to re-establish the boundaries of their relationship within more classical, businesslike terms and hurting Bobby was the only way to do it. He'd seen too deeply into her with the re-opening of Joe's case, had seen how shaky and unbalanced she really was beneath the façade of control and sarcasm she lived behind. At the apex of her discomfort, he'd called her Alex and brought them closer - so in response, she'd broken his heart and driven them back apart because she was scared of where she found herself, scared of where they were going and what she might find at the end of the road.

She was scared to let him in. Never in a million years would she have seen herself as the one who feared openness, the one who hid the ugly parts away from the world and herself and didn't want anyone else to see them for fear of viewing her as weak. That was a Bobby Goren trait; _he_ was the one who used trivia and psychoanalysis to better understand his own life in the wake of the crimes they investigated. Alex Eames and her Norman Rockwell childhood had nothing to hide – _right_?

With Joe, life had been easy. They were in the same profession but different departments so they'd understood one another but not been too close on the job. Work could be brought up briefly (as in, "How was your day, dear?"), then dispensed with in favor of their comfortable home life. Joe's smile was easy, his family big and close-knit like hers (not that she saw them much anymore), and he'd made her laugh. During their marriage, she'd surprised herself at how much she'd come to rely on him, to need him in her life to provide those light moments when she felt herself get too cynical about the world, her job, and everything else. She'd read in some magazine that there was always one person in the relationship who loved more than the other and that it was a constant give and take of which one needed the other the most. Turned out she and Joe were perfectly balanced: he loved her more but she needed him the most.

Bobby Goren is Joe's polar opposite in every way, though, and she wonders that she never saw that before. Bobby's tall, heavier build is nothing like Joe's lean, wiry frame and his dark eyes pierce more than Joe's lighter ones. Bobby reserves his smiles for rare occasions, his family is in shambles, and he frustrates her more often than not – but their relationship has somehow become closer and seems more intimate in many ways. He reads her better than anyone ever has before; they talk in shorthand that only they understand and sometimes don't even use words. A jerk of the head, a meeting of the gaze and they've had an entire conversation complete with emphasis and punctuation in the time it takes to draw breath. And where Joe used to tease and they bantered easily and constantly, she and Bobby have gone hours at a time without talking and she's never felt lonely. They're two halves of a whole and yet it wasn't until the moment their skin touched in passing the file that the picture became clear:

In the Goren and Eames relationship, Alex Eames is the one who loves more and Bobby Goren is the one who needs her most. If she opens herself up, he'll see that – an astute mind like his can't miss it - and she isn't ready to go there yet. In fact, she doesn't know if she'll ever be ready to go there for that matter. Being needed takes a lot out of a person and she feels as though she's already given so much away – she lost Joe, gave up nine months to her sister as a surrogate mother, and now there's Bobby and any more might just break her.

Yet even if she doesn't want to say it – _or think it, or feel it_ – Alex is committed to whatever "this" is with her partner. It would be hypocritical at this point to pull punches in this part of her life when she hasn't in any other. She told Bobby she was in it for the long haul when she said it was too late for her to worry about what direction her career was headed in; captaincy and leadership roles be damned, she won't change a single day spent with the man who needs her to anchor him in place and save him when he's in over his head.

The bottom line, then, is that Bobby Goren needs her to love him and she's more than happy to do so because, while the effort might take a lot from her, what she gets back in the form of his unwavering loyalty and friendship is more than a fair exchange. Who knows? If she can love him enough, maybe one day she will open up to him and find that his faith in her is enough to keep the seams from coming apart.

He looks up from the paperwork he's been scribbling at, glances at the clock and rises from his chair to pull on his overcoat.

"I'm going out for some air," he mentions off-handedly, fingers already fumbling in his pockets for the cigarettes and lighter she knows are stashed within.

"Bobby," she says quickly, causing him to turn back to her. His expression is quizzical.

"What do you say we just knock off for the night and go down to Alice's Diner for a bite?" she asks him the first question that springs to mind. A rumble from her stomach tells her that it agrees with her sudden moment of inspiration.

The question startles him and his eyes widen reflexively, then his face clears into its blank mask again.

"You, uh, you sure?" he wants to know. It's as though he doesn't trust her motives, as though he's protecting himself from any truths she might carelessly toss in his direction.

Alex gives a small smile – she can't blame him for that. "Yeah. I'm starving and my eyes are crossed from staring at these forms."

He nods. "Okay then. I'll buy."

She shakes her head in disagreement. "No way. This one's on me."

She's pulling on her own jacket when he argues with her in the easy tone she's used to – the one she's been missing. "What? You don't think I'm good for it?"

She smiles and chuckles. "I never said anything of the kind – but good for it or not, I'm still buying."

"We could put it on Logan's tab," Goren puts in slyly as they approach the elevators. They've matched their strides without thinking about it and Alex is glad to be buoyed along in his wake again. They've been out of sync long enough now that she hadn't realized how much she'd missed it.

"By the way," she tells him as they step into the elevator and the doors whir shut, "I'm not sitting in the smoking section so don't even think about lighting up."

Guilt washes over his expression and he looks surprised to be outed in his lapse. "I, uh… No problem."

They ride down to the lobby in silence and Alex knows that this late night meal won't be enough to repair them completely, but it will be a good start. The comfortable bulk of Bobby's shoulder is resting against hers (or is it the other way around?) and she feels as though her small gesture has already begun to close some of that distance between them.

As the doors slide open and they step out, headed for the street, she impulsively decides to take one more step towards the man that she's hitched her wagon to – both in career and, it would seem, in life.

"Hey Eames," Bobby is saying, "thanks for this."

"Bobby," she takes a deep breath and asks, "for tonight, do you think you can just call me Alex?"

Their eyes lock for a second and he gives a small smile and a nod, then holds the door open for her.

It's too late to turn back now.

FIN


End file.
